Secret Life Snap Shot #16

Despite her small stature (Judy is 4’11”), Secret Lifer Judy Lee was a standout on her high school volleyball team, regularly intimidating her opponents with her “setting” skills. Here’s her story:

“In this picture, I was a senior at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh, NC. As an incoming freshman, I had never played volleyball before, but my friend Nancy and I decided to try out for the team. The try-out was grueling! I remember thinking my forearms were going to be completely black and blue, if not broken, after the first day! Coach Stevens really worked us hard. After what felt like weeks of boot camp, Nance and I both made the varsity team as freshman! We were ecstatic!

“I’m pretty short. It’s funny to think that I played volleyball for 4 years in high school. But height doesn’t matter when you’re a setter. My job was to set the ball up for a perfect spike. One of my teammates, Laura, was 6’5″ or so. It was funny to see us walk out on the court. My head would barely reach the bottom of the net and when she raised her hands, she had an entire hand sticking above the net. The other team would always smile at the height difference. Little did they know that we were a force to be reckoned with. Those smiles would soon be wiped off their faces after the first few minutes.”

Despite her small stature, she always wore her ‘Air Judy’s‘ on gameday

Executive Producer Joshua Seftel’s love for science started at a young age. He was a Pre-Medical Sciences major in college, and his first job out of school was as a high school physics teacher. Meanwhile, Josh discovered a passion for filmmaking and made his first documentary, the Emmy-nominated “Lost and Found” (1992), about the plight of Romania’s orphaned and abandoned children. He hasn’t stopped making films since, including “Taking on the Kennedys” (1996) and “War, Inc” (2008) starring John Cusack, Marisa Tomei, and Ben Kingsley. Josh also directed the first season of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and helped develop the Emmy-nominated PBS children’s show “Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman.” He has long been committed to public broadcasting and is a frequent contributor to “Nova Science Now.”

This week, NASA announced that it will partner with the European Space Agency to send a 4,760-pound spacecraft into space to peer out over billions of galaxies in an effort to map and measure the universe. Its purpose: to investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Original funding for "The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers" was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.